Leonard Hoar 
Leonard was born in 1630 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England and his baptism took place in 1630 in Gloucester (St. Nicholas), Gloucestershire, England.1 He died at the age of 45 on November 28th, 1675 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was buried on December 6th, 1675 in Old, Quincy, Suffolk County, Massachusetts Bay Colony.1 1 General Notes
M.D.
University of Cambridge
President of Harvard College
"LEONARD, the third president of Harvard College, at which he grad. in 1650, went to England, was a physician and clergyman, and settled as the latter, at Wensted, in Essex. He was ejected from office for non-conformity, and returned to N. E. 1672, and in July, was elected president, but resigned 15 March, 1675, and d. at Braintree, 28 Nov. same year. He had no sons, but two daughters, Bridget and Tryphena. His widow, a daughter of Lord Lisle, m. Mr. Usher, of Boston, and d. 25 May, 1723. Mrs. Joanna Hoar, probably his mother, d. at Braintree, 21 Dec. 1661."
SOURCE: First Settlers
===================
"Leonard returned with his wife to Boston, Mass., in July, 1672, and preached for a short time as assistant at the South Church. He was soon called to be president of Harvard College, December, 1672."
SOURCE: Colonial Ancestors
===================
"LEONARD, grad. Harv. Coll., 1650; M.D.; President of Harv. Coll. 1672 to 1674-5, when he died"
SOURCE: Watertown Genealogies
====================
"Leonard Hoar (1630-75; son of Charles, g.son of Charles); came from Eng. with his widowed mother, Joanna Hincksman, 2 bros. and 2 sisters, and settled in Braintree, Mass., 1639-40; M.D. Harvard, 1650; returned to Eng. and settled as a clergyman in Wenstead, Essex Co.; returned with his wife to Boston, Mass., 1672, and preached for a short time as asst. at South Ch.; pres. Harvard Coll., 1672-75; m Bridget Lisle (John, of Moyles Court, Co. Southampton, one of the judges who condemned Charles I, made to leave the country and was murdered at Lausanne, m Alice, dau. and co-heir of Sir White Beconsaw, Kent, she was beheaded by order of Judge Jeffries at Manchester, 1685);"
SOURCE: Compendium of American Genealogy.
====================
"LEONARD, Cambridge, br. of John, b. in Eng. but never has it been kn. wh. was the f. wh. we therefore presume, did not come to our land; his mo. Joanna, who d. at Braintree, 21 Dec. 1661, brot. the three s. and ds. Margaret, wh. was prob. the eldest ch. and m. Rev. Henry Flint, and d. 10 Mar. 1687; and Joanna, wh. m. 26 July 1648, the sec. Edmund Quiney. He was gr. at H C. 1650, went to Eng. was min. at Wenslead, Essex, and one of the ejected under the Bartholomew Act, took the degree of M. D. at the Univ. of Cambridge, 1672, and came again higher to preach by invit. at third, or Old South Ch. but with commend. from strong friends in London, that he should be made Presid. of the coll. to succeed Chauncey, late dec. He arr. 8 July 1672, and same mo. was chos. to the office; but was sadly unfortunate in his place. A combination against him of three of the corp. created such diffic. that all the stud. left the Inst. and in Mar. 1675 he resigned, as the Gen. Court in Oct. preced. had, not indistinctly, desired, tho. on his coming two and a half yrs. bef. they had voted a salary half as much again as they gave C. on the sole condit. that H. be elected. On 28 Nov. foll. he d. prob. of broken heart for his treatm. aged only 45 yrs. Cotton Mather was then one of the undergrad. and may, perhaps, be believed in what he says of the unhappy countenance of sev. very good men, towards the ungovernable youths in their ungovernableness, at least as to the latter portion he was an unwilling, if we may presume he could have been, a good witness. See Magn. IV. 129, among the best, tho. characterist. pages of that strange work. Contempo. documents should be referred to in the Coll. of Hutch. 435, 45, 52, 64, and 71; but the noble Hist. of the Univ. by Quincy, I. 31-5, may seem to be adequate in its decision. His w. Bridget was d. of that lady, sacrificed by the detestab. governm. of James II. and his worthy Ch. Just. Jeffries, 2 Sept. 1685, and of John Lisle, the regicide (a lawyer of distinct. made by Cromwell one of his Commissrs. of the Great Seal, sometimes call. erroneously, Lord Lisle, because the Protector summoned him to the other house, who met a death by violence, after the restoration, in Switzerland). We kn. not of any ch. but d. Bridget, b. at Cambridge, 13 Mar. 1673, who went with her mo. 1687, to England, and bef. her ret. 1697, after d. of her [p.432] sec. h. the d. m. Rev. Thoas Cotton, a min. of London, wh. was a most lib. benefactor of H. C. The wid. of the Presid. had m. 1686 (and she long outliv.) the 2d Hezekiah Usher, with whom she was not happy, and d. 25 May 1723. Farmer mistook, I presume, for that of one of the ds. of the Presid. the name of Tryphena, sis. of the w. of the Presid. wh. m. first, a Lloyd, and bef. the d. of her sis. a Grove. This Tryphena was, prob. mo. of the w. of Lord James Russell, fifth s. of William, first Duke of Bedford, and after his d. wh. was on 22 June 1712, m. Sir Henry Houghton, and d. 1 Sept. 1736. See Collins's Peerage. This lady and her mo. wrote after the d. of Mrs. Usher, sis. of one, and aunt of the other, to Ch. Just. Sewall wh. had many yrs. bef. kn. the m, when in his visit to Eng. 1689; and in return he sent the mourning ring that had been presented for Lord James's d. A greater mistake may be observ. in an Art. of Geneal. Reg. IV. 92, where Leonard Cotton, wh. was of Hampton Falls, N. H. and chief mourner at the funer. of his gr.mo. Madam Usher, in Boston, s. of that Rev. Thomas C. (of course gr.gr.s of John Lisle), is made to m. Alicin, d. of Lord John Lisle aforesaid therefore sis. of his gr.mo. Against such matches, the Levitical instit, or the law of nature, is not often necessary to be invoked. "
SOURCE: Genealogical Dictionary of New England Settlers.
====================
"President Leonard, H. C. 1650, M.D. Univ. Camb., preached Wanstead, Essex, Eng., ejected 1662, Pres. Harv. Coll. 1672-75, m. Bridgett, dau. Lord Lisle, d. 28 Nov. 1675, a. 45, wid. m. Hezekiah Usher of Bost., 565; opposition of Urian Oakes to, compelled to resign presidency, 274-5; befriended by Elijah Corlett, 368"
SOURCE: Cambridge (Mass.) History
====================
"Rev. Leonard, son of Charles and Joanna, b. at Gloucester, Eng. about 1632, came to N. E. about 1642. Was grad. at Harvard College in 1650; became its third president, constituted 10 (10) 1672. [S.] He m. Bridget, dau. of Lord John and Alicia Lisle. Ch. Bridget b. March 13, 1673, (m. Mr. Thomas Cotton; res. at Shoreditch, London, in 1695, her mother then dwelling with her). He d. in Boston 28 Nov., and was bur. at Braintree 6 Dec. 1675, ae. 45 years. Will dated 25 Oct. 1675; beq. to dau. Bridget and wife; to bros. Daniel and John Hoar, sisters Flint and Quinsey; cousins Josiah Flint and Noah Newman. To be interred at Brain-tree. The widow m. Hezekiah Usher. She d. May 25, 1723. [Reg. IX, 1 54, and 377.]
SOURCE: Pioneers of Mass.
====================
"HOAR, LEONARD, educator, college president, was born about 1629. He was president of Harvard college from 1672 till 1675, and was the first person to propose the modern system of technical education, by the addition of a garden and orchard, a workshop, and a chemical laboratory to Harvard. He died Nov. 28, 1675, in Braintree, Mass."
SOURCE: Encyclopedia of American Biography
====================
"HOAR, Leonard (1630? - 28 Nov. 1675), Puritan minister and president of Harvard College, was born in Gloucestershire, England, the sone of Charles Hoare, a brewer, and Joanna Hinksman. Charles Hoare was wealthy enough to provide in his will for Leonard to be sent to Oxford University, but after his father's death in 1638, Leonard's mother moved the family across the Atlantic to New England, where they settled in Braintree, Massachusetts. Instead of Oxford, Leonard Hoar enrolled at Harvard College, where he received an A.B. in 1650 and an A.M. in 1653.
"By this time the success of the Puritan faction in the English civil war had begun to lure many Harvard graduates and New England clergymen back to England, and Hoar joined the exodus. In July 1654 he was granted an M.A. from Cambridge University and soon thereafter was made rector of Wanstead, Essex. But the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the subsequent Act of Uniformity forced Hoar and many of his fellow Puritans from their clerical posts. Throughout the 1660s Hoar maintained close ties to other dissenters, especially through his marriage (probably in the late 1600s) to Bridget Lisle, daughter of John Lisle, one of the regicide judges who passed sentence on Charles I. The couple had two daughters. Hoar also strengthened his connections to England's scholarly and scientific communities. He published an abridgement and guide to the historical books of the Bible, studied botany and medicine, and in 1671 was made a "Doctor of Physick" by Cambridge University. Hoar's intense piety and scholarly ambition were reflected in a letter to his nephew, Josiah Flint, a student at Harvard College. He instructed Flint not to do only what is "expected of you; but daily something more than your task.... [W]he n the classes study only logick or nature, you may spend some one or two spare hours in languages, rhetoric, history, or mathematics, or the like." In addition to this formidable plan of study, Hoar recommended that Flint "read every morning a chapter in the old testament, and every evening one in the new," and meditate on the meaning of these daily scriptural passages.
"In the early 1670s Hoar's reputation for scholarship and piety raised considerable interest in New England. The newly formed Third Church of Boston recruited him to be its minister, and in 1672 Hoar returned to Massachusetts intending to take up the post. At the time the advanced age of Charles Chauncy, the Harvard College president, was worrying P uritans on both sides of the Atlantic. A group of English dissenting ministers sent letters of introduction strongly recommending Hoar's "gifts of learning and the grace of his spirit" as suitable qualifications for Chauncy's successor. Chauncy died while Hoar was crossing the ocean, and shortly after his arrival Hoar was elected to the Harvard presidency and formally installed on 10 December 1672.
"Hoar approached the Harvard presidency with vigor and enthusiasm. He planned to revive the impoverished and underenrolled college by introducing experimental science to the curriculum and by providing equipment for agricultural, chemical, and physical experiments. He pushed through a new college charter to strengthen the hand of the corporation, made up of the president and teaching fellows, against the influence of the outside board of overseers. He also used his transatlantic connections to raise money for a new college building to replace the rapidly decaying "Old College. " But for reasons that remain obscure, Hoar's presidency quickly degenerated and ended in disgrace. Shortly after his inauguration, the resident teaching fellows and student body turned sharply against the new president. Cotton Mather, a very young student at the time, later wrote that "the Young Men in the Colledge [sic]... set themselves to Travestie whatever he did and said, and aggravate everything in his Behaviour disagreeable to them, with a Design to make him Odious." In 1673 the four teaching fellows resigned their posts, many students dropped out, and vague complaints about Hoar's "untruthfulness" were brought before the Harvard Overseers and the Massachusetts General Court. These bodies gave some measure of support to Hoar, but their encouragements were only half-hearted, and the students continued their steady withdrawal from the college. Hoar finally resigned on 15 March 1675. His health rapidly declined, and less than nine months later he died in Boston of a "consumption."
"The reason for Hoar's rapid downfall was the subject of considerable controversy at the time and has never been fully resolved. Some blamed the affair on the jealousy of other aspirants for Hoar's position, notably Urian Oakes, the minister of Cambridge who was passed over for the presidency. In addition, Boston's churches had recently been riven with contention over issues of ecclesiastical authority. In this context, Hoar's sudden departure from his English dissenting church without a formal dismissal, together with the breach of his implied promise to become the minister of Boston's Third Church, may have turned some supporters against him. Thomas Danforth, a Third Church member who was glad not to have Hoar as his minister, believed "he will be a better presid[ent], than a pulpitt man (at least) as to vulg[a]r acceptation," hinting at the possibility of Hoar's general unpopularity. But supporters like Cotton Mather and John Hull insisted that he was a "worthy man " wronged by enemies, and that if "those that accused him had but countenanced and encouraged him in his work, he would have proved the best president that ever yet the college had."
"Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard's tercentennial historian, blames "some fault in Hoar's character or conduct," perhaps "something unfortunate in Hoar's manner, repellent in his personality, harsh in his discipline, or unreasonable in his policy." Yet as recently as 1976 a resolution was passed by the Massachusetts State Senate defending Hoar against the "contumacious and envious displeasure" of the college fellows who forced him to resign and proclaiming his "innocence of any misdeed while president of Harvard College. " Judged by his scholarly promise and the strength of his plans for the curriculum, it does seem possible that Hoar could have revived the rapidly deteriorating college. But whether the trouble was caused by his personal shortcomings or by a conspiracy of his enemies, Hoar's presidency was a disaster, perhaps the low point in the early history of Harvard."
SOURCE: American National Biography
====================
"... Leonard graduated from Harvard College in 1650, took degree of Doctor of Medicine, returned to England and settled as a clergyman in Wenstead, Essex Co. Married Bridget Lisle, daughter of John Lisle of Magles Court, Co. Southampton. He was one of the judges who condemned Charles I. He had to leave the country and was murdered at Lausanne. He married Alice, daughter and co-heir of Sir White Beconsame, Kent. She was beheaded by order of Judge Jeffries at Manchester in 1685.
"Leonard returned with his wife to Boston, Mass., in July 1672, and preached for a short time as assistant at the South Church. He was soon called to be president of Harvard College, December 1672. "At his inauguration the college was thinly attended and badly supported. With little profit and much anxiety, discipline was badly supported and he retired in 1675." (C'lop. Am. Lit., vol. 1, p. 8.)
"Epitaph wrote for the Tomb of
Leonard Hoar, Doctour of
Phisick, who departed this life
In Boston the 28 November.
Was interred(*) here the 6 December
And was aged 45 years.
Anno Dom. 1675.
"Three precious friends under this tombstone lie Patterns to aged, youth, and infancy, A great mother, her learned son, with child, The first and least went free, he was exil'd In love to Christ, this country, and dear friends, He left his own, crosse'd seas, and for amends Was here extoll'd, envy'd, all in a breath, His noble consort leaves, is drawn to death. Stranger changes may befall us ere we die, Blest they who well arrive eternity."
SOURCE: Alfred Hoar Family
Details of Leonard's family with Bridget Lisle
1 horrocks1.FTW
Further sources/citations:
The Ancestry of the Hoar Family in America @ p. 290, http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=emak&id=I25584
Further sources/citations:
The Ancestry of the Hoar Family in America @ p. 290, http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=emak&id=I25584
Page last modified